Master Liu said that this person is a new person who has only begun to appear in the past two or three years, but his identity is too mysterious, and it is said that he has a huge network of relationships, and he orders the people below to do everything, but no matter how big or small everything is, there is only one person who makes decisions in the end. This person used to be a veteran, very young, and he had accumulated a lot of contacts because of his involvement in the army, but this person was very low-key, and it was generally difficult to find out the details of this person if he did not investigate carefully. Even the people around him who helped him with his errands didn't know much about this person.

The content of what Master Liu said at this point is similar to what Da Mao said when he was drinking at my house before. But Master Liu admits that there is only so much he knows, and it is not confirmed, and these contents are all heard from other masters. In this way, I am more sure of Da Mao's original thoughts, since this person can have such a powerful vein, even if he can still manipulate some people to do things for himself after being discharged from the army, and the ghost to be found is a ghost who died from a gun and was killed many years ago, there are only two possibilities for such a ghost to appear in Sanchuan Ghost City, either it is powerful and cannot be sold elsewhere, and the master who received it may not have enough ability to control it, or it is the mysterious person behind the scenes, From the very beginning, I knew that this ghost would appear in the Mikawa Ghost City, so I came to squat early in the morning.

In this way, both possibilities are very high. In our time, it was a very honorable thing to join the army, because you would get into the enlistment car with a big red knot on your chest in the cheers of the crowd and become a hero to defend your home and country. On top of that, when you leave the military, you can get a demobilization payment and a very good job. According to what Master Liu said, the mysterious person behind the scenes was able to have such a large network of contacts precisely because he had contact with some people in the army that we ordinary people could not reach, so that after retiring from the army, he even extended his minions to our industry.

I said to Master Liu, these situations you are talking about are exactly what we want to investigate. So please take us to this Sanchuan ghost market. Master Liu shook his head and said that he would not take us to find it, but he could draw a schematic diagram for us, which was used to drill through the bamboo forest, and just follow this diagram.

After speaking, he took a pen and paper, and said to us while drawing, this place is out of the county to the northwest, at the third fork in the road and then to the left, about half an hour to walk will see a tomb mountain, there is an earthen bridge on the side of the tomb mountain, standing on the earthen bridge can see the bamboo forest in the distance. But when you enter, you need to cross the bridge first and then go down to the river, follow the river to the edge of the bamboo forest, and from there you will enter, the bamboo forest is very dense, there is no decent road, you need to find the nearest path to the entrance. From that trail you go deeper, and at each point you get to a branch, you can go down the way I said above.

As he spoke, he finished drawing. But when I took the drawings and looked at them, I didn't really understand them, because this Master Liu's painting skills were really not complimentary, and I could only say that I could roughly understand what he meant, and I was talking about the first fork in the road to turn that way, how deep it turned, and then where to do it. There are a total of 49 ways to walk, and as long as you take the wrong one at random, you will not be able to reach the ancient town hidden in the bamboo forest. Master Liu said that this place used to be a tea and horse station in the Qing Dynasty, but later there was a plague, and people died and walked away, and it was abandoned. There was no one to govern it, and there were wars every year, and the bamboo grew like crazy, and within a few years, the town was completely covered in the bamboo forest. Therefore, when you go to look for it, it is best to leave a mark, so as not to take a wrong step and go around and around, and you will not be able to get out.

I asked him, is it possible that there was still someone who never came out? Master Liu said of course there is, there are really a lot of people, but no one can find the bodies of the lost people, which all say that people who live to see people die want to see corpses, people got into the bamboo forest, and they didn't go to the ghost market, so they disappeared out of thin air.

For more than 20 years, he stressed, almost two or three people have gone missing here every year. However, except for a small number of people in the industry who know about this place, the local people rarely know, or do not say it, and as these people die of old age, there are even fewer who know the truth.

I'm lucky to know the truth, and I'm glad I didn't think I'd die so young, so I was able to keep this secret for many years. In the following time, I asked Master Liu to tell me everything he knew about this ghost market, but Master Liu was secretive and didn't seem to want to mention it, as if the more I talked about it, the more it interfered with my own cause and effect, after all, if I was unfortunately lost in the bamboo forest, maybe I would also become a missing member, then he would become a reason for my disappearance.

After chatting and chatting, it was noon, and I saw that Master Liu's master and apprentice did not want to keep me and Da Mao for dinner, so I stood up and prepared to say goodbye, I wanted to say that while the time was still early, according to the place Master Liu said, it was probably more than an hour away, so it was better to go and see the terrain first. And my heart is full of expectations, I want to get a glimpse of this mysterious ghost market.

When we found the earthen bridge, it was actually a little different from what I had imagined. Because generally speaking, bridges are built on the river, and Master Liu said earlier that the bamboo forest is by the river. So I agreed that it was a river, but when I looked down from the earthen bridge on the side of the grave mountain, I found that it was a river, at best it was a small ditch, only about ten meters wide, and it didn't look deep, as if even a child could directly cross the river. The entire width of this earthen bridge, including the place where the two ends of the earth bags are connected, is only about 20 meters, but we really saw a large bamboo forest, and from where we stood, the depth felt like a few miles.

There are many bamboos in the south, and the bamboo in Sichuan is diverse depending on the location. So it's not uncommon to see such a large bamboo forest in the south. Da Mao and I thought it was strange because we knew the secrets of the depths of the bamboo forest. After calculating the time, it was about two o'clock in the afternoon, so I ate a few steamed buns with Da Mao and crossed the river to the river.

When I walked towards the bamboo forest by the river, I began to make some preparations silently, since this place will often be visited by traders from all over the world, so there should be no danger on the road, because these traders, including those who know this place, are more or less proficient in occult arts, I don't think any ghost is willing to break ground on Tai Sui's head and ask for his own hardships. So my preparation is just the fragrance of the soldiers and horses, and I want to say that if we really get lost, I can still let the soldiers and horses lead the way, at least bring us back to the entrance.

In fact, on the surface, we still think a little simply, because the terrain in the bamboo forest is too complicated, and after drilling into it not far away, we can't even distinguish between the southeast and the northwest. Da Mao and I are not compass users, and it looks like there are bamboos all around, and although there is still light shining through the sky, the whole air seems to be green. Fortunately, the schematic diagram drawn by Master Liu only needs to be in front of the front, the left and right, not the southeast and northwest, otherwise, we may not be able to find the right way even if we look here for a year and a half.

It was only forty-nine steps, but we went around for more than two hours. There are some small flying insects in the bamboo, which always stick to our sweaty necks, which is very uncomfortable. At the forty-eighth step, there was a stone shrine hidden in the bamboo on the side of the path, and I went to look at it, but I found that it was a little different from the small shrine on the side of the road that we had seen before. Usually in our shrines, there are things such as the land god, or the mountain god and the river god, or the Jizo Bodhisattva, but in this small shrine, there is a monster holding a ring weapon, in the form of an attack, with a hideous appearance, with exposed fangs and three horns on its head, and the posture is humanoid, but it looks like a monster. I always felt as if I had seen a statue of this thing somewhere, but I couldn't remember it at that moment.

At the forty-ninth step, according to what Master Liu wrote, after one more turn, we continued to follow the only path and we were able to reach the entrance of the ancient town. And I secretly paid attention along the way, at every turn I secretly made an inconspicuous mark on the pillar with incense ash, so I didn't find out until this time that this was an arrangement of mandarin duck arrays, because the mandarin ducks are in pairs, so when the numbers are in pairs, they can't get around anyway, it's a dead formation, and forty-nine is a singular number, which means that the mandarin ducks have been broken. There are very few people who use this formation, and it is said that it was created by a person named Qi Jiguang in ancient times. Judging from the newness of the shrine just now, and the traces of the bamboo stakes that were obviously cut down on the trail, these things, including the only way to enter the ancient town, should have been deliberately designed like this in recent decades, for the simple reason that it is not to be found by outsiders.

Da Mao said that when he entered and exited this road, his eyes were blindfolded, but he could smell the smell of this bamboo in his nose, and he also felt that he had been turning around for a long time, so it must be this place. So I said to Da Mao, the person who hired you in the first place may still be there at the moment, you quickly put on your hat and cover your face with a towel, in case you are recognized, we have worked so hard to get here, but it will be in vain.

So before walking out of the bamboo forest, Da Mao put on his own straw hat and made a handkerchief to cover the part below his nose. We continued to walk forward, about 20 meters later, we reached the edge of the bamboo forest, and suddenly it suddenly became clear in front of us, a long street town hidden in the depths of the bamboo forest, appeared in front of us.